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A lot of drama has circulated about Justin Bieber's single, "What Do You Mean?" What hasn't been addressed nearly enough is who Biebs is talking to in the video? Some smokeshow model? Selena Gomez? His dad after his nude photos came out?

What if we told you it was none of the above? What if we told you he was addressing a certain Star Wars character that nobody understands 100 percent of the time?

In this Huffington Post original video, we finally get the answer.

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Hotels of North America sounds like a reference book you’d find only in a dusty travel agent’s office. In Rick Moody’s latest novel of that name, it’s more like a self-published manuscript containing a top TripAdvisor user’s most prized reviews. It’s the great American crowd-sourced business rating novel.

User-submitted review sites have given us something unexpected and delightful over the years: small reservoirs of satire and pathos, a way to gather together the sum of many people’s shared and yet not-shared experiences. The anonymous horde have exercised their poetic license on kitschy T-shirts printed with howling wolves via Amazon reviews and offered awkwardly personal insights into their relationships via Yelp reviews of the restaurants where they met their ex, and we have all benefited.

In Hotels of North America, the site is the (fictional) RateYourLodging.com, and the reviewer is one Reginald Edward Morse, whose writings have, per the preface by the director of the North American Society of Hoteliers and Innkeepers, been collected into a volume to be left in hotel rooms for the perusal of travelers. Morse begins reviewing in 2012, but some of his reviews consider hotels in which he stayed decades before; we hear about hotels where he stayed with his ex-wife, hotels where he stayed with a woman he refers to as a language arts instructor, hotels where he stayed with his girlfriend, K., and hotels where he stayed alone.

Slowly, we learn poignant tidbits about K., something of a partner in crime who goes by different bird-related pseudonyms at each hotel, and about his marriage, the daughter it produced, and the affair that ended it. Morse himself claims to be writing these reviews for extra money (suggesting that Moody may not be aware that such sites typically function on a volunteer-only basis), as he’s left a career in finance to be a motivational speaker -- a successful one, he insists despite the evidence. Morse finds minuscule excuses, or none at all, to divert the focus of the review from its customer service or its offerings of cookies in the lobby to morose meditations on the evolution of intimacy in a marriage, the nature of hotel sex, and the horror of feeling utterly alone. “Your former state is now sandblasted, as abraded as anything else could be by the ravages of time,” ponders Morse in a review of a stay, with his ex, at Americas [sic] Best Value Inn in Maumee, Ohio. “What is more tender than mutual recognition of failure?”

RateYourLodging, apparently, is more of a LiveJournal than a TripAdvisor.

Moody’s prose, as befits the writer’s writer he is, possesses a sinuous, entangling power. His long, far-ranging sentences beguile with surprises and the sheer beauty of craftsmanship. He’s also funny, and Morse’s reviews read like a hysterically exaggerated version of the most ridiculously self-centered Yelp comments (e.g. “i had the hugest crush on the daughter of the owner and i would come in after class when i was in jr high and try and talk to her. but the skate store next door opened up and all the skaters got to her and one of them got her pregnant”). The concept of our hotel stays as a form of second life, one that runs parallel to the lives we spend at home, is intriguing, and Morse’s own hotel story serves as proof that this second life often catches us at our highest highs and lowest lows -- his honeymoon, but also the weeks after being kicked out of his house. The hotels of North America deal in extremities.

Ultimately, Hotels of North America feels more like a story experiment than a novel. Morse’s distinctively neurotic, overly articulated style, while reminiscent of such great characters as Charles Kinbote of Pale Fire, never registers as fully real -- perhaps because the hotel review framing keeps him at an awkward distance, and requires devices, such as antagonistic commenters, to prod him into revealing more and more about himself. Yet his character remains thin and mysterious, and his motivations unconvincing; meanwhile, his serpentine style and erudite vocabulary bear marked resemblance to both that of the hotelier who composed the preface and to Moody’s own afterword, blurring together the “characters” into one garrulous fussbudget.

The novel contains many moments of profound insight and pointed comedy, but the framing ultimately falls a bit flat, leaving us, at least, with the pleasure of having bathed ourselves in Moody’s luxuriant prose. And in an era of monotonously MFA-ish, spare style, that’s no small thing.

The Bottom Line:

Rick Moody’s latest novel misses on character development, but his decadent prose hits the mark.

What other reviewers think:

Newsweek:  "This is a very literary novel, cleverly constructed and written in an arch, clever, very literary voice, at once mannered and unrestrained, like an aging patrician after his third drink."

Kirkus: "Lively and lightly written. Not the strongest of Moody’s books but of a piece with them, offering a sardonic but entertaining look at modern American life."

Who wrote it?

Rick Moody is the author of six novels, including The Ice Storm, and several short story collections. He’s also published a memoir, The Black Veil, and an essay collection on music.

Who will read it?

Readers who prefer distinctive, memorable characters and unconventional narrative structures.

Opening lines:

“As I write these lines it’s early spring in the Northeast, and Americans of every age and station are getting back into their cold, muddy, salt-befouled automobiles.”

Notable passage:

“Hair-care products are an important part of any lodging experience. A seasoned traveler, that is to say, a person who is never home, a person who’s putting up at an expensive hotel with a language arts instructor while his wife (I regret to say) is in an apartment no more than two miles away, is in a position to profit in the area of travel-size hair-care products.”

Hotels of North America

by Rick Moody

Little, Brown and Co., $25.00

Publishes November 10, 2015

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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"Awesome" and "inspiring" probably aren't the words that leap to mind when you scroll through Apple's iTunes contract -- but that's about to change.

Artist Robert Sikoryak has been converting the "unabridged" legal text you agree to when installing iTunes into a series of gorgeous comic parodies on a Tumblr called "iTunes Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel." He posts a new page every day and expects the series to run for a total of 94 pages.

Each image is a sendup of work from legendary comic artists like Will Eisner and Jim Steranko. (Some perhaps less legendary but still famous creators are parodied, as well, like Garfield's Jim Davis.)

Sikoryak shared a sample of his work with The Huffington Post that you can feast your eyes on below. If nothing else, these comics serve to highlight both the absurdity of iTunes' terms and the immense talent of Sikoryak, who's perhaps best known for Masterpiece Comics.

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Any movie buff has a proverbial wish list of screen pairings. Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette probably weren't on yours until you heard about "Miss You Already" and realized that, holy shit, these two are perfect together. Their comedic sensibilities are complementary, but both have confirmed they can breathe soul into unlikely dramatic parts (Collette in "About a B0y," for example, or Barrymore in "Grey Gardens," though the list continues). Now they've accepted the challenge of an illness dramedy, that capricious genre that has produced as much treacly hogwash as it has profound exploration. 

It's evident that Barrymore and Collette, who had only met in passing before making "Miss You Already," have continued their companionship offscreen. While attending the movie's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, I watched a live feed of the red carpet from inside the theater. Collette seemed distracted during her interview, clearly only interested in locating her co-star. When she did, they threw their arms around one another as if they had, well, missed each other already.

The results are equally touching onscreen. Collette plays Milly, a former rock 'n' roll wild child who's settled settled down with a husband (Dominic Cooper) and kids. Barrymore is Jess, who's remained her dependable accomplice ever since she moved to London in grade school and Milly taught her to swear with British flair. Milly is diagnosed with breast cancer, and the two most cope with a potential future without each other.

"Miss You Already" is a weepy friendship ode suffused with humor, thanks to the direction of Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen," "Twilight") and a script by British actress Morwenna Banks. Sitting down with Barrymore and Collette at a New York hotel last week toward the end of a long press day, the pair's energy ebbed and flowed during our brief chat, but their dedication to each other was apparent, especially when talk turned to mutual cooking-school aspirations. Could a documentary be in their future? Add it to your wish list.

First, the obvious question: How much do you guys love "Beaches"?

Collette: I’ve watched it several times, although I haven’t seen it in awhile.

Barrymore: We love "Beaches." I haven’t seen it in a long time either.

It's one of those Sunday afternoon movies that you have to watch if you see on TV. 

Barrymore: Oh, my God. Oh, yes.

Maybe we'll be saying that about "Miss You Already" in a few years.

Barrymore: We can only hope. 

Toni, you've been involved with the movie a lot longer and you've watched the other role cycle through different actresses. How attentive were you to the casting of the other part, knowing it could make or break the movie? I imagine it's much easier to manufacture romantic chemistry than it is platonic chemistry. 

Collette: Yeah, you can’t determine chemistry, but I run on my gut. I’m all feeling. For better or for worse, that’s how I make all decisions. I, along with our brilliant director, Catherine Hardwicke, and producer, Chris Simon, was adamant that Jess had to be Drew, for several reasons, which, to me, seem very obvious, but I’ll go through them now here. She is very vocal about all things women. She’s such a brilliant pioneer in modern feminism. 

Barrymore [to Collette]: Thank you. Shit! 

That’s a big crown.

Barrymore: I know!

Collette: But she emanates such warmth and is so grounded. If you’re looking for the ideal best friend, I think it’s a case of "look no further." So I wrote her a letter and told her all of this and kind of talked about why I thought the film was important and how rare a film like this is, and thankfully I think a combination of my begging and the wonderful script got her over the line.

But the roles were initially reversed. Toni, you said you felt like you always play dependable characters, but I honestly can't imagine it the other way around. Maybe because Drew usually plays such nice characters. Could you see yourself as Milly, Drew?

Barrymore: I think, sure, we think we can do the opposite roles. But everything happens for a reason. If the square peg was in the round hole while she was trying to make it happen a different way, there must have been a reason for that because it really was meant to be that she would play Milly. She happened to call upon me, a woman who had just had her second child and was very much in the mode of creating life and making babies and in that mind frame and in that body, literally. I think there was a time where I was wilder many years ago and could have channeled my inner Milly, but right now I’m very much in the mode of the way that my friends were growing up, which is much more grounded and quiet and toned-down. I was just so at the right place to play Jess.

Toni is just such a dynamic actress and so talented and so incredible that I want to see her fucking chew up the scenery. I want to see her be Milly, and be flawed and selfish and all over the place and dynamic and dazzling and a firefly you just have to chase and watch and fly with. There was just such a support we had for each other. And then we really knew there was a requirement of fun because our director was like, “I don’t want to make a maudlin, overly depressing, overly sentimental piece,” and that’s what we wanted, too. I think Toni threw her research into what people went through with cancer. She wanted to honor them and play it with a strength. It was just a very intimate process. It wasn’t Hollywood, it wasn’t big-budget, it wasn’t trailers and everyone off in their own worlds. It was like you literally show up to work, you worked in the house in London all day long together, nobody went anywhere, we ate together, worked together. And then Toni and I got lucky -- we’d go play together afterward. We’d go and have wine and talk about our days and our lives. Our kids hung out and played. I know it’s acting and I know it’s film, but it just seemed like everybody was out to make this their life for a little while. It has some grounded-in-reality feeling because of that.

How vital was that setup in getting you to agree to the project? We haven't seen much of you since you had kids. The only movie you've done is an Adam Sandler project, which I imagine comes fairly naturally by now.

Barrymore: Yeah, I don’t work as often right now and probably won’t for the next few years. With Toni’s idea to make this film and having two daughters and wanting this for them and their future and for women right now today, I had to do it. I just think it’s such a special movie for women. I felt very lucky. Toni has said there are times she feels she just has to go do something that’s very primal and you connect with it on that level. I was like, "I just need to go do this," whether it was to get back to work or just to put something out there in the world or just be a part of something. I guess it was all of the above. But I really wanted to go and be with Toni and do this.

Toni, was shaving your head an easy request? I imagine it was especially tough since you only had one take to get it right.

Collette: It’s true, yeah. It’s just something that Milly has to go through. There was no question. I just did it.

I saw the movie at the Toronto Film Festival, where a few younger actresses I assume you've each mentored had big showings, like Brie Larson and Ellen Page. Have you been able to connect with them?

Collette: I’ve been emailing with Brie, but we didn’t see each other at all. Festivals are crazy. If you bump into someone, it’s a miracle.

Barrymore: I always think I’m going to see people and then you never see anybody. But I’m so happy for Ellen. I am so proud of her. She’s so amazing. I love Brie Larson, too. I am the biggest Brie Larson fan.

One of the movie's most special scenes is Milly and Jess going to the Yorkshire Moors because they've always wanted to see where Wuthering Heights was set. I hope this doesn't sound macabre, but if your time was limited and you made a bucket list, what would be on it?

Collette: Snorkeling in the Maldives. I also want to see the Northern Lights. I want to go and stay in one of those glass igloos where you can look up and see it.

Barrymore: In Fairbanks! I lived right below there in Alaska for three months. I want to go to Italy and go to cooking school.

Collette: We’re going to do that.

Barrymore: We’ve talked about that a lot. We’re going to do it together.

Collette [to Barrymore]: You lied to me. You can cook. I really can’t.

Barrymore [to Collette]: I really can’t, but thank you for thinking so. I make fishsticks. That is not good enough.

Collette [to Barrymore]: You did that slow-cooked pork!

Barrymore [to Collette]: Oh, that.

Collette [to Barrymore]: Give me a break!

Barrymore [to Collette]: But Dave’s slow-cooked pork is even fucking better. That is amazing.

Collette: That’s my husband. His is just ridiculous.

Barrymore: He’s a really great chef.

If you go to cooking school together, can you make a documentary?

Barrymore: Oh! Brilliant.

Collette: Oh my gosh. Let’s pack that up. We’ll talk about this. Thank you for bringing it up, because we have a thing with a thing with a thing with a thing.

Barrymore [to Collette]: Oh! You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy?

Collette [to Barrymore]: Yeah, I’m going to talk to a guy about it.

"Miss You Already" is now in theaters. This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Peter Bresnan isn’t famous.

At least, not yet, but that’s what he’s trying to be -- or, if not famous, at least funny -- in his new podcast following his adventures in trying to be a stand-up comedian. It’s aptly titled: “Tell Me I’m Funny.”

His first two episodes provide a look into a world few see, save for other up-and-coming comedians: the open mics, the joke critiques, the feeling that his mom is his only fan. Stand-up comedy, for Bresnan, is “something I’ve always loved, but I’ve never actually tried doing before,” as he says in Episode 1. This isn’t the story of a Steve Martin or Sarah Silverman, or someone who’s had a bit of success on his local circuit.

Bresnan is an absolute beginner.

Other podcasts have followed their hosts as they try something new with unknown results: “First Day Back” garnered attention for Tally Abecassis’ vulnerable documentation of her return to the workforce after a long break; Megan Tan’s “Millennial” showcases the recent college grad’s attempts to find herself, and a career, through that early 20s haze. And, of course, there’s “StartUp,” which in its first season followed Alex Blumberg as he created what is now Gimlet Media, a podcasting powerhouse in its own right with nary a missed note in their catalog.

What draws us to these underdog stories, tales of attempts, of unsure outcomes? It follows logic to be interested in someone successful: in interviews and profiles, we want to know about Stephen King’s writing habits; Amy Schumer’s comedic brain; Steph Curry’s smooth court moves. But it’s unlikely that Wanda from down the street will appear on the cover of a magazine anytime soon. To an extent, it makes sense: why inquire about a stranger’s life? We shouldn’t care as much.

Yet, it turns out, we do.

Podcasting doesn’t necessarily incur the large costs that most life examiners -- book deals, documentaries, magazines -- have to contend with, meaning they’re also not bound by the need to have an insanely huge fan base to exist. Anyone with a microphone, a story and some computer know-how can start their own show. This is not to undercut the skill level and logged hours needed to create a good podcast, which is clear in Tan’s, Bresnan’s, and the other aforementioned shows, but let's agree the startup costs are lower and the pathways more accessible in the digital content realm than, say, in Hollywood.

They’re journeys that, thanks to the hosts, tap into basic feelings we’re all equipped with: questioning our worth, having a dream, feeling hopeful, feeling static.

As a listener and non-famous person, I can conjecture that these stories are enjoyable because of some existential comfort they provide: I can see myself as the unsure stand-up finding out how his act went over onstage, or the woman who is unsure how to be outside of the assured path of college. If they’re not journeys I’ve been through myself, they’re journeys that, thanks to the hosts, tap into basic feelings we’re all equipped with: questioning our worth, having a dream, feeling hopeful, feeling static.

The journey these “beginner” podcasts follow also carries the weight of the unexpected. Will Tan get the highly coveted NPR internship she discusses in "Millennial"? Will anyone tell Bresnan he’s funny? All we know, as listeners, is that the odds are against them. Success isn’t guaranteed, a factor that taps into our love for the underdog. Daniel Engber explored this phenomenon on Slate in 2010. While his article generally focuses on underdogs in sports, the takeaways transfer: “... the expected value of a bet on an underdog -- its average payoff in raw, chest-bumping excitement -- will always be higher than the expected value of a bet on the favorite.” The story of, "I'm perfectly satisfied and will continue to be," doesn't really have the satisfying arc we crave in our narratives.

There’s also the confessional nature inherent to these podcasts; the feeling while listening that you’ve stumbled upon a stranger’s audio diary. There’s personal stuff that many would typically conceal from others (think missteps, fears, insecurities) being piped right into our ear buds. A sense of trust is built, a closeness wherein it seems natural to want to support the hosts in their missions. Most people wouldn't recognize them on the street, but hosts of these personal-diary-type podcasts show that, with the right framing, an individual's own journey can be a compelling one.

We’re fixated on -- and, yes, rooting for -- the protagonist’s lives, which can be tricky for a creator when the story she's covering is her own. As your reality shifts, your product does, too.

“The tricky thing about this podcast is, I’m documenting my life and enough really crazy amazing things, or interesting things have to be happening in for it to be a good podcast,” Tan said in an interview with PRX. “So I question the longevity of it, but I also think there’s a potential for it to boomerang in a different direction.”

Similar podcasts have undergone this boomerang she mentions: “StartUp,” once Blumberg’s company was, well, started up. It shifted its focus to documenting another beginner of sorts in Season 2: Dating Ring, a matchmaking service in its early stages. And when “First Day Back” felt complete as a season, Abecassis promised, in the latest episode, that she’d be back with stories of other people’s first days back.

It’s unclear how Bresnan’s comedy career will go; whether Abecassis can enter the same film industry she left when she became a mom; if Tan will get the radio-producing job of her dreams. But they’ve made us care about what will happen next -- whatever, indeed, that might be.

Previously in podcast thoughts: Even Without Visuals, Eerie Podcasts Are Taking Hold

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Newly published research by the League of Professional Theater Women reflects the gender parity in Off Broadway shows. In research collected for an initiative called "Women Count," Martha Wade Steketee and Judith Binus studied employment in thirteen positions over five years and found that almost all  -- with the exclusion of stage managers and costume designers -- are dominated by men. 

Moreover, of the 22 theaters they considered, only six of them featured 50 percent or more plays by women, including one that is actually called "The Women's Project." Just nine featured 50 percent or more plays directed by women.

Steketee and Binus also charted high and low percentages for each theater-related job between 2010 and 2015, noting that, over the course of the study, only between 22 and 36 percent of set designers and between eight and 16 percent of lighting designers were women (or, as they write in the study, "lighting designers are overwhelmingly men").

So, how can we change things?

"If they aren't already aware that there is an issue, every employer must be made aware that there is an issue," Binus wrote to The Huffington Post in an email.

"Private, confidential conversations need to take place," she said. "One strategy is to put theaters who have complementary strengths and weaknesses in conversation.  Our study is a tool for those theaters to analyze and find those theaters that will best serve that purpose."

Each year, The Kilroys, a "gang of female playwrights and producers" focused on gender parity, compiles a list of recommended plays by women as a tool for those producers who claim plays by women are hard to find.

"We created The List because time and time again we heard that artistic directors would love to produce female playwrights, but were having trouble locating good plays," member Zakiyyah Alexander told HuffPost back in June. "Ultimately, we know it's possible to program an exciting season of theater that reflects the landscape we live in, which is more than just a landscape of men."

It's important that theaters be aware of the statistics and, more importantly, be conscious of their role in the rampant inequality on and off stage.

The entirety of Steketee and Binus's findings are available for your sobering consideration at theaterwomen.org. For more on this all-too-obvious issue, consider HuffPost's past coverage of female playwrights. As they say, all the world's a stage, and apparently the only players that matter are men.

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Marketing manager Ceylan Sahin Eker has degrees in graphic design and illustration, so when she became a mom, she channeled her creativity into an adorable photo series of her newborn.

The Istanbul-based artist takes creative weekly photos of her 9-month-old son Timur dressed in funny (and often pun-y) onesies. "During my pregnancy I bought tons of cute onesies but soon realized after my son's birth that he was growing faster than I expected," Sahin Eker told The Huffington Post. "The onesies were getting smaller by the minute and I had to at least use them once before putting them away."

"He changes every day and I don't want to forget any moment," the mom added. "So this project gives me a chance to document his uncontrollable growth. Babies do grow freakishly fast."

Because Timur was born on a Thursday, Sahin Eker selected that day for her weekly Instagram posts and named the series "Happy Thursdays." Her husband Bediz helps out as art director. "He always comes to my rescue when I am sleep deprived and brain dead," she said.

So far, Sahin Eker has taken 31 photos for project, first on her iPhone and then her higher quality Canon camera. She also began incorporating props related to the theme of each onesie, and even created homemade onesies as her supply ran low. "The whole thing got bigger and bigger every week as everybody (myself included) started waiting for the next one," the mom said. 

As for baby Timur, he enjoys himself during the photo shoots and especially likes playing with all the props. If he doesn't seem to be having fun, Sahin Eker said she finds a different activity.

The mom said she plans to print out the photos and put them in an album for Timur's first birthday. "I know for sure that he will not remember this year of his life but with these photos he'll see how he grew week by week in the future."

She's happy to let others enjoy the project as well. "My son is the reason why I want to wake up in the morning and be a better person," she said. "I hope these photos can put a smile on people's face." 

H/T BabyCenter

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A group of special NICU babies helped usher in Prematurity Awareness Month and bid farewell to October with their precious Halloween costumes.

On October 31, the NICU nurses at Loyola Medicine in Maywood, Illinois dressed the hospital's tiniest patients in sweet handmade costumes for their annual contest. This year, the contest featured a baby Yoda, lion, minion, peanut butter and jelly, Michael Jordan and more.

The hospital shared photos of the babies in their costumes on Facebook, along with a festive message -- "We wish all families and their little goblins a safe and happy Halloween!"

Scroll down to see the tiny contestants.  

H/T PopSugar

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Donald Trump is hosting "SNL" this Saturday with musical guest Sia. By now, you've seen Trump's promos with Cecily Strong. NBC has already removed one promo where Trump calls Ben Carson a "total loser." We have learned there were actually a number of promos, written by Trump and his staff, that didn't even make it to tape. Below are the scripts for the rejected promos.

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Dozens of prominent Hispanic figures from across the political divide have come together to formally "condemn" Donald Trump and the comments the GOP candidate has made against Latinos since the beginning of his presidential campaign. 

In a blistering statement published Tuesday in Spanish on Univision.com, 67 scientists, historians, award-winning authors, lawyers and more from the United States, Latin America and Spain signed a statement denouncing Trump's behavior and asking the American people to "stop tolerating his absurd views." 

Among the most controversial comments and actions cited in the statement include Trump's remarks on Mexican immigrants -- who he called criminals, "rapists" and drug traffickers in June -- and his removal of prominent journalist Jorge Ramos from a press conference in August. 

"His hate speech appeals to the lowest of sentiments: like xenophobia, machismo, political intolerance and religious dogmatism," reads the statement, translated by The Huffington Post from Spanish. "All of which inevitably is reminiscent of past campaigns aimed against ethnic groups, which resulted in the death of millions of people. In fact, physical aggressions against Hispanics and calls to prohibit the use of Spanish in public have already begun."

"Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks are not based on statistics or proven facts but on his very personal and unfounded opinion," the statement continues. "He not only disrespects immigrant Hispanics (later there could be other ethnic groups) but exhibits a dangerous attitude toward his opponents, who he portrays as stupid and weak."

The group also states that some of Trump's political proposals, which include building a massive wall along the Mexican border and deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, would be detrimental to the United States. 

"Mr. Trump’s behavior is unworthy of a candidacy to the presidency of one of the most powerful countries in the world," they write at the end of the statement." We condemn his behavior and hope that the American people will stop tolerating his absurd views."

The statement's extensive list of signees includes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa and Mexican actors Diego Luna and Demián Bichir.

Ricky Martin wrote a similarly scathing op-ed posted on Univision.com in August. In his piece, the Puerto Rican singer urged Latinos to unite against Donald Trump.

“The fact that a person like Donald Trump… has the gall to continue to freely harass the Latino community day after day makes my blood boil,” the star wrote.

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Is it a movie set? Is it a model home? No, it's North Korea.

When London-based architecture critic Oliver Wainwright visited North Korea over the summer, he was stunned by the symmetry and color inside some the buildings he toured. Whether a sports complex, children's nursery or office building, the sites he visited were color-coded and neatly arranged. In a piece he wrote for the Guardian, Wainwright even likened these interiors to a Wes Anderson film set.

But many of these interiors may vanish soon. In a quest to present North Korea as a modern nation, the government is undergoing a massive effort to construct more contemporary buildings in its capital city of Pyongyang, Wainwright wrote in a Sept. 11 article for The Guardian. Later that month, the Hermit Kingdom unveiled an impressively state-of-the-art airport and leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly ordered that some buildings replace their floors with more "modern" materials like vinyl and granite, Wainwright explained.

Take a look at Wainwright's photos of North Korean interiors and marvel: 

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 Read the original article on artnet News.

Last weekend, the sight of a woman perched naked on top of a London rooftop caused a great deal of confusion amongst locals and passersby. The incident turned out to be a performance by artist Poppy Jackson, titled Site, and carried out for four hours.

Images of Jackson's performance—which took place on the roof of Toynbee Studios in the city's East End—went viral after an onlooker working in a nearby office shared photos of the unfolding of the bizarre event on social media.

After a mix of critical acclaim and bewildered reactions from Britain's outspoken tabloids, the artist spoke to the Evening Standard about her performance.

Jackson admitted that she was “astounded by the global reach of the work," and explained that the idea behind the performance was to “celebrate the power the body holds."

Addressing the media's response to her work, she said “I think it has ‘confused' people because I am celebrating my body in a way that is not sexually objectifying such as we are so accustomed to, whilst also critiquing why and how shame is layered upon the female body."

“It's obviously received some misogynistic responses because of the tabloids' sensationalist take on the work," she added, "but these comments just go to prove why artwork presenting the female body from a woman's perspective is so important."

“I think the reason that it has had an impact in the media is because this platform usually presents female bodies in a way that objectifies them or commodifies female sexuality," Jackson argued.

Jackson emphasized that "Societal readings attributed to female sexuality […] is 'for' others. I use my body itself to work against this viewpoint, in a dignified and respectful way that celebrates the power the body holds."

The artist also explained that she deliberately chose an outdoor venue for her performance to make the piece accessible to everyone.

“I believe that art is for everyone and that making work only for art galleries can, even accidentally, exclude many people, so I often make my work for public contexts, as it deals with themes that are political and social."

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SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chile's government is acknowledging that Nobel-prize winning poet Pablo Neruda might have been killed after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.

The Interior Ministry released a statement Thursday amid press reports that Neruda might not have died of cancer. The statement acknowledged a ministry document dated March of this year, which was published by the newspaper El Pais in Spain.

"It's clearly possible and highly probable that a third party" was responsible for Neruda's death, the document said.

However, the ministry cautioned that a panel of experts investigating the highly disputed topic had not reached a conclusion.

Neruda was best known for his love poems. But he was also a leftist politician and diplomat and close friend of Marxist President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide rather than surrender to troops during the Sept. 11, 1973, coup led by Pinochet.

Neruda, who was 69 and had prostate cancer, was traumatized by the coup and the persecution and killing of his friends. He planned to go into exile, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship.

But a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago, where he had been treated for cancer and other ailments. Officially, Neruda died there on Sept. 23 from natural causes. But suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in the death have lingered long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990.

Neruda's death was so controversial that in 2013 his body was exhumed for examination.

Tests showed no signs he was poisoned, but his family and driver were not satisfied and requested further investigation. The judge investigating the case has asked for testing for substances that were not looked for in the first round of tests.

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The contemporary baby name world is full of many different options. It's also constantly evolving. Many of the names in today's Social Security Administration Top 500 list were virtually nonexistent in the U.S. in the 1980s. 

Here is a list of increasingly popular baby names today.

Girls

Aniyah

Aniyah is one of those names that resembles a lot of other names, from Anya to Amaya to Aliyah, but is actually a recent invention. Used for zero babies in 1985, today it stands at number 226. Aniyah was used for nearly 1500 girls in the U.S. in 2014, with spelling Aniya given to another 500+. The name may be thought of as a contemporary spin on Ann. 

Cataleya

This newly-popular name was inspired by a type of orchid. The name Cataleya was given to nearly 700 baby girls in 2014, placing it at number 461, versus zero in 1985.

Lyric

Lyric is now a popular baby name for both genders, ranking number 271 on the girls’ list and number 860 on the boys’ list. In 2014, more than 1200 girls were named Lyric, along with more than 250 boys. In 1985, that count was 10 girls and zero boys.

Nova

The celestial name Nova, which means "new," reemerged on the baby name list in 2011 after falling into obscurity around the 1930s. Since then it’s soared all the way to number 287 and was given to more than 1100 baby girls last year. In 1985, that number was 38.

Zuri

This baby name has been popularized by a character on the Disney Channel show "Jessie." Zuri was used for 660 girls in 2014 and ranked number 475, but did not appear at all on the 1985 extended roster. The name is Kiswahili for "good" or "beautiful." 

Yaretzi

The name Yaretzi is believed to derive from the Aztec language family and mean “you will always be loved.” It may also be related to the goddess name Yara, popular in Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries. Yaretzi, which didn’t appear at all on the 1985 roster, was given to nearly 900 baby girls in the U.S. last year, placing it at number 372. It’s currently ranked at number 58 in Mexico. 

Boys

Ryker

The name Ryker given to more than 2500 boys last year and ranking at number 151. In 1985, only eight baby boys were named Ryker.

Iker

Unless you're a big soccer fan, you may not have heard of the name Iker, hugely popular thanks to Iker Casillas, who plays for both Portuguese and Spanish teams. The name is Basque for visitation and is pronounced EE-keer. It was given to 1787 baby boys in the U.S. last year, ranking at number 215.

Kyler

Tyler and Kyle were both already a top 100 names in the 1980s, inspiring lots of variations, including combo-name Kyler, given to 64 baby boys in 1985. Today, though, that number has exploded, with over 1200 babies named Kyler last year, ranking the name at number 288. Kyler is a Dutch occupational name that means “archer." 

Kason

Jason was a top 10 name in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but in 1985 Kason had barely been stirred to life, given to only 15 boys that year. Today, that number has soared to nearly 900, with Kason -- a hybrid of Jason and Case and Karson -- ranking at number 365.

Adriel

As a Biblical name, Adriel was used quietly in 1985, when it was given to 42 boys and 14 girls. Today that’s increased to nearly 700 boys and 50 girls, with another 50 baby girls named Adrielle. Adriel ranks number 433 on the boys’ list. 

Jaxton

Of course Mom knows the name Jack, and she’s also familiar with Jackson, and she may even know that Jackson is sometimes styled as Jaxon or Jaxson. But Jaxton? Probably not, given that it doesn’t appear at all on the 1985 extended roster. A hybrid of Jackson and Braxton, Jaxton was given to 640 baby boys last year placing it at number 457.

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"I was never afraid of the men," photographer Danny Lyon said of his time spent with Texas prisoners. "I liked them. And I had many friends inside the system that would stand up for me, dangerous men. Anyway, in my heart of hearts I felt I was doing something good for the men, and most of them knew it."

For 14 months in 1967, Lyon documented life at a variety of Texan prisons, capturing the hellishness of the environment and the humanity of the inmates. Almost 50 years later, Lyon's series "Conversations with the Dead" remains as haunting as ever. 

Brooklyn-born Lyon has long dedicated his career to depicting outsiders, from the civil rights advocates in the the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or the riders in the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle club. For "Conversations with the Dead," Lyon set his eyes on the inmates of America, visiting seven penitentiaries throughout the Texas Department of Corrections and photographing six. He was granted unrestricted access to the prisoners by the Director of the Department, providing unprecedented proximity to some of the most feared men in the country. 

Each of the locations provided a unique glimpse into the realities of prison life. Diagnostic was reserved for new inmates entering the system, while Ferguson housed young offenders from 17 to 21 years old. The Walls was the oldest prison in the Texas system, Ramsey got the less burdensome convicts, Goree was for women, and Wynne was for the elderly and mentally ill. 

Ellis was reserved for the most dangerous prisoners. "Ellis was an awful place, so bad, that being sent there was used as a threat to convicts that were in the Walls, or on other prison farms," Lyon explained in an interview with Phaidon. Despite the depravity of the conditions they were forced to endure, the inmates were represented with dignity and respect through Lyon's lens. 

Aside from being a portal into the bygone days of the prison system, Lyon's photos offer a grim reminder of the problems the prison industrial complex face today. As photographer Pete Brook, the man behind "Prison Obscura" explained in an earlier interview with The Huffington Post, the history of prisons in this country has not been one of progress, but of decline. "No society in the history of mankind has incarcerated so many of its citizens than the U.S. today, now," he said. "We need to disassemble the notion that prisoners are different. They are us and prisons are ours. It might not seem like prisons are part of our society, but they are. So we need to be conscientious consumers of images."

Lyon's images are an echo of an earlier time, a time when uniforms were white and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was doing time. But the photos also serve as a dark omen, of a prison-industrial complex that would only grow more hungry, more unjust, more powerful. "The prison changed me a lot, and not in the way I could have predicted," Lyon said. "There is an expression about dope, 'Once the needle goes in, it never comes out.' I never really shook the Texas Prison off."

"Danny Lyon: Conversations with the Dead" recently showed at Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York. 

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British comedian Ryan Swain became a dad to identical twin girls seven months ago. Like many parents of twins, he's noticed he tends to receive the same series of questions and comments from friends, acquaintances and strangers on the street. 

So the funny dad turned to comedy and created a short video summing up some of his "quickest and wittiest" responses to these remarks. Swain told the Huffington Post, "I wanted to make the video from a true observational perspective of being a parent and a dad and having to embrace the same questions asked by people daily about my twins."

The finished product is called "What A Parent Of Twins Finds Themselves Saying To Everybody!" Some gems include, "Yes, I can tell them apart," "Yes, I'm glad they're mine and not yours, too" and "Yes, they are natural. What's artificial about a twin anyway?"

Enjoy.

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Hello. It's us.

We were wondering if there was any way we could stop ourselves from listening to this student's incredible voice for the billionth time.

Seriously though, this student from Seoul Music High School in Korea sang Adele's "Hello" and her performance, which was captured in a video, left us completely breathless. 

Just listen as her voice starts off delicate and light and eventually swells to something rich, commanding and effortlessly flawless by the second chorus.  

We might actually play this as many times as we've listened to the original. 

H/T Reddit

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This doctor is so fly.

A wildlife photographer spotted a red-billed oxpecker picking food out of a giraffe’s teeth, and caught the incredible (and hygienic!) moment of the bird acting as a dentist for his tall pal. Yulia Sundukova, a photographer from Moscow, captured the interspecies exchange in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area in 2014, but the photos have resurfaced across the Internet on Friday.

“With wildlife you never know when the best moment [will] happen,” Sundukova told The Huffington Post. “These photos are funny, and they can involve people to think more about wildlife and how to save it.”

While the image of a little bird burrowing itself in a large creature’s mouth may be jarring, fear not -- there is no fowl play here. According to a 1999 Oxford Journals behavioral ecology report, red-billed oxpeckers have a symbiotic relationship with large African mammals like giraffes, and obtain the majority of their nutritional needs by picking food from other animals’ teeth and skin.

However, by some other accounts, there may be a little bit of codependence here. For example, some of the birds that feed off ticks living on mammals reportedly keep their hosts' wounds open in order to keep their meal ticket going, according to National Geographic. But this trip to the dentist was healthy and beneficial to both creatures, even if the giraffe looked a bit begrudged while receiving then cleaning.

"The funniest thing about it was the way the giraffe was standing,” Sundukova told the Telegraph. “It reminded me of how people behave when they're at the dentist -- it just wanted the visit to end as soon as possible."

Been there, giraffe. Been there.

H/T The Telegraph

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Celebrated film composer Carter Burwell isn't necessarily a trained musician. "Unless you count piano lessons," he said. But that's hardly hindered his success. Burwell is perhaps best known for his decades-long collaboration with the Coen brothers, whose films "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "True Grit," among others, are enlivened by his musical prowess. Last month, the Middleburg Film Festival paid homage to the composer with a live performance of his works by the Loudoun Symphony Orchestra. In a conversation with movie critic Ann Hornaday, Burwell shared his thoughts on music and the movies. 

Music plays a recognizable role in film, working to underscore rather than overpower the actors' performances. Burwell's mastered this nuance. "I only notice the music in the film if there's something really wrong or something really right," he explained. "Taking into account a couple of films that I've worked on, for example, 'No Country for Old Men,' we found that the presence of anything that sounded like music at all repressed the feeling of anxiety and made things feel a little less tense. And of course, the film's whole value is this dry tension. So the music that's in that movie is snuck in underneath wind or underneath car sounds so you hopefully never notice the score."

Conversely, Burwell's score for "Carol" -- the impossibly beautiful Todd Haynes film, with knockout performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara -- is boldly placed, memorable and exceedingly appropriate. 

"The last scene of ["Carol"] has no dialogue, nothing else, and the music is very loud and very upfront," said Burwell. "Todd Haynes is a melodramatist and he likes the music to be like that, almost more up front than I would choose, but I knew that's what he wanted. It should be whatever is going to make the most dramatic experience for the audience." 

"Carol" explores a life-altering relationship between a headstrong, wealthy housewife (Blanchett) and a quietly courageous store clerk (Mara), in a time when such love affairs were to be kept silent. 

"Really what the score is there to do is to speak," Burwell said. "The culture they are in hasn't given them the language with which to describe their feelings. [...] We are watching the carefully paced development of love and at first comes desire, which is not easy to put into words ever but the music is behind a lot of that pacing, that development of the relationship." 

As film scores are used to manipulate emotions as often as to inform the audience, Burwell approaches his vocation as dynamic, transitional. "You can see over the history of the movies that what's acceptable has changed. In movies from the '40s, they're telling you who everyone is and what they're like. It's on top of, if not a little ahead of the action. What I prefer is very much the opposite, to leave the audience a little more uncertain about what's going on," he said. "But there is also an element of attempting to find something in the film that's not already there on the screen and speak to that, bring that out. Sometimes that means bringing something that's completely different on the screen. And you can call that irony, but I think it doesn't always serve an ironic purpose, I think that sometimes it can just be another layer. Sometimes music isn't playing what's there, but it's still informing it in some other way."

Skilled emotional manipulators in their own right, the notoriously unconventional Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have tapped Burwell again and again over the past 30 years. 

"We talk before they shoot about what the problem the movie presents," Burwell said. "So for 'True Grit,' it was that it was a Western, but we didn't want to necessarily do a Western score. I read the book, I read their script and I noticed one of the things that isn't in the script is that the book is written from the point of view of this girl, and she's constantly reading scripture. I thought that the churchiness wasn't in the script, so I thought we'd use hymns in the score of the movie. But sometimes I don't know until we have the picture." 

Despite hours spent dissecting their scripts, Burwell remains frequently perplexed by the filmmakers. "They are very taciturn though, I do miss the face-to-face because on the phone they are people of very few words. They hate to ever talk about what their movies are about, so sometimes it can be difficult to claw out of them, they refuse to discuss the meaning. So it's a challenge." 

Starring George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum,"Hail, Caesar!" marks Burwell's latest effort with the Coen brothers. "We had to try so many things because it's a film with many films within it," Burwell explained. "There are five or six films within the film, and they're all different styles: there's a Western, there's a Roman swords-and-sandals movie, an Esther Williams water ballet, and the question becomes how they come together to make one movie. It's something we're still figuring out." 

In order to get a piece of music out of his head, Burwell says all he has to do is record it. He's amassed a collection of over 1,500 works yet to be used in film.

"I'm always looking for something new to listen to. I don't have a lot of listening time because I'm often writing, so I don't listen to as much as I used to," he said. "I'm not worried about unconscious influences because influences are good and important, but I actually have a very poor memory for music," Burwell said. "That's why I improvise, I write something and record it and that way I can remember it. If I'm worried about something, I ask my wife and she can tell me if I stole it. She has a good ear for music. But I would never know!"

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